A personal blog writing about my family and home, along with my views on education, health, technology and parenting.

Category Archives: cooking and recipes

I got up this morning to make breakfast, you know, warm up some sausage biscuits in the microwave, and the darn thing just quit working on me. I just decided to take the biscuits to Grandma’s house and fix them there. When I got there, I was telling her about my microwave going out and learned something I didn’t know about her. She had one of the first microwave repair shops around here back when microwave ovens first came out and cost a fortune.

She told me about an older man that brought his microwave oven in and asked “Where’s the man that works on microwave ovens?” She told him that he was looking a her. He gave her a funny look and said “You can’t fix a microwave oven.” She asked him to leave it with her and IF she couldn’t fix it, he didn’t owe her a dime and she would give it back to him just like he brought it to her BUT, if she fixed it, he had to tell all his buddies about how she had fixed it for him. He said it was a deal and left. All that was wrong with it was a fuse had burnt out and she called him back in 15 minutes to pick up his microwave. “Couldn’t fix it, huh?” he asked. When he got there, she put a cup of water in it and it heated it right up so she charged him $10 and sent him on his way. He called her about a half hour later and said that the microwave worked better than it did when he bought it. He said it even popped popcorn now and never did before. Imagine that!!! He promised to tell everyone he knew about her and did send her many people to her to fix theirs too.

Lady Bug and I decided it would be a lot of fun to have a tea party in our pajamas. We invited all of her favorite stuffed animals and dolls too. We set the table with Lady Bug’s new tea party set that she got for Christmas.

I worked on preparing the food while she tended to the decorations. Lady Bug set the table with her new set and even got out some decorative items from our craft box. She drizzled sparkle confetti on the table and made cute little place setting cards for each of her guests.

Instead of tea we had some deliciously warm hot cocoa. In addition to the hot cocoa we had blueberry muffins, fresh fruit salad, creamy yogurt, and a little bit or orange juice. It was soo much fun watching her place food on the plates for her guests.

Everything tasted great and we indulged ourselves at the table chit chatting away for a good hour or more. It was a really fun and exciting way to have our breakfast together. I’m sure we’ll remember this morning for a long time to come. It’s all about making the every day normal moments in our lives special. We could have eaten breakfast in front of the television, instead we chose to make a wonderful memory.

Quite a few of my friends got new Kitchen Aid Stand Mixers for Christmas this past year. I’ve always wanted one myself and i have some serious Kitchen Aid mixer envy. I love to cook and love the idea of getting one of these miracle mixers as a gift. I’ll have to be sure to tell every person I know that I would really like to have one.

Maybe I can convince them all to pool their money for my birthday and get me one. I would probably be the happiest girl on the Earth. I can’t decide though if I want a red one or a sharp looking stainless steel one. I love red and have other red kitchen gadgets and appliances. Red would fit in nicely with everything else, but so would the stainless steel. I think the stainless steel makes the gorgeous mixer look like a big statement piece in anyone’s kitchen.

If I had one of the beautiful mixers it would always stay out on my counter top. I would never put it away. I would want to use it too much. But, then again if I had my dream kitchen I would see if I could get one of those nifty mixer lifts installed so that it hides in it’s own cabinet. Then you can pull it out up to the counter level and still have my counter space for other things like cookie sheets and such. I guess it’s something to look forward to.

Cooking is one of my all time favorite things to do. That being said there are a few things that really are must haves when it comes to the kitchen. Here is a list of my top 10 things that everyone needs to have in their kitchen

1. A good set of knives: 3 1/2-inch paring knife, 8-inch heavy chef’s knife, and an 8-inch bread knife

2. Pots and Pans; a stockpot, a sauce pan, a nonstick frying pan, a cast iron skillet, and a medium Ducth oven

Ladybug has been begging to make a gingerbread house for the past week. I thought it might be fun to do a DIY gingerbread house instead of buying a kit this year. We decided to use graham crackers for the buildings. We wanted to get started right away and didn’t have time to wait for cookies to bake. The graham crackers worked great because they come in rectangles and you can break them easily into square panels or smaller rectangles.

I did make our own frosting glue also known as royal icing. I made white of course for snow and glue, but I also made a little bit of green and red to use for decorations. Ladybug had a great time squeezing the icing out and gluing the crackers together. I used a cardboard base that I cut from an empty cereal box and covered with aluminum foil. I ran a bead of glue or icing down for each piece of the house base to stick to so it wouldn’t shift around. It ended up working great and the finished product was really stable.

For decorations we had sprinkles or all colors, gum drops, little M & M candies, Skittles, peppermint sticks and rounds, and Necco Wafers. I always remember using Necco Wafers for the roof tiles and have passed that tradition on to my daughter. Ladybug made bushes out of gum drops and used the peppermint rounds for windows. She made acute path with the Skittles and M & M’s too. We had a great time making this adorable DIY Gingerbread house and we didn’t even have a kit.